Dr. Sharif Abu Shammala, CEO of Al-Quds Foundation Malaysia contributes to writing a chapter from the book: “AL-QUDS: History, Religion, and Politics,” which was co-authored by an elite group of academics and researchers.

Abu Shammala’s research “Bayt al-Maqdis: A Short History from Ancient to Modern Times” has been published as the third chapter of the book which was issued by Turkey-based SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research.

In the chapter, he addressed the historical narrative of Bayt al-Maqdis since ancient eras until the present time while drawing attention to the important milestones in the history of the holy city. Briefly and with deep focus, Jerusalem’s history has gone through several episodes, from the time of the ancient Canaanites, through the Roman wars, then the Islamic conquests, and the Crusader invasion, then the liberation of Beit al-Maqdis by Saladin al-Ayoubi, and the events that followed in the era of the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the period of the British Mandate, then the Zionist occupation and the formation of the Palestinian Authority, all the way to Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of the occupation state ‘Israel’, and then the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem on the seventieth anniversary of the Palestinian people’s catastrophe (Nakba) in mid-May, 2018.

Abu Shammala believes, according to the foreword of the chapter, that “history is a natural gateway to understanding reality and interactions of the present, and in the case of a city like al-Quds, the link of its present with history is evident in a clear way, because of the city with its ancient heritage, status among religions, sacred nature, political uses, states pursued over it, and its unique experience, makes knowledge of its history urgent.”